“Son, that woman is acting strange,” she told him over the phone. “A pregnant woman doesn’t cover herself up like that all day. She’s hiding something from you.”

“She’s tired, Mom.”

“I was tired too when I had five children, and I still made beans for everyone. Don’t be naive, Julian. Women lie too.”

He’d get angry, hang up, and tell himself not to listen. But afterward he’d stand in the hallway, staring at the bedroom door with a knot in his throat, wondering why Mariana looked more frightened every time he came close.

One afternoon, Julian came home early because the power went out at the hardware store. He opened the apartment door expecting to find Mariana asleep, but the place felt too still.

The bowl of soup he’d left for her sat untouched on the table. The glass of water was still full. Mariana was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling with red eyes.

“Mari,” he said softly, sitting down beside her. “Tell me the truth. What’s going on?”

She pulled the blanket tighter around her legs.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t say nothing. You haven’t been walking right for days. You barely eat. I heard you crying last night.”

Mariana turned her face to the wall.

“Please don’t ask me.”

Those words hurt him more than any shouting could have.

That night, Doña Carmen showed up without warning. She came in carrying a bag of bread rolls and wearing the hard expression of a woman who believed being a mother gave her the right to walk into any room.

“All right, enough of this,” she said from the bedroom doorway. “My son is working himself to the bone, and you’re lying here like a queen.”